Mario Kart Tour: Your First Tour Part 3: Racing Basics

Your goal in Mario Kart Tour is to get a high score, not merely get 1st place.

Your score is based on three values:

Base points from your equipped Driver/Kart/Glider, Position points based on your final placement in the race (and chosen engine class), and action points.

The first two are easy to understand. Each item prominently displays its point value.

Simply add up your three values to find your total base points.

Using equipment that has not been maxed out increases its base score based on your ranking. Click HERE for the full data table on how much XP it takes to level up an item. Each day, you are limited to X experience, with each Driver, Kart, and Glider you use getting the full amount you earn each day. You earn 10 points for 1st, 9 for 2nd, etc. per race. However, with the hard cap, you cannot fully upgrade your gear day 1. However, if you complete races with already maximized items, the XP still counts to your total, even though you get nothing for it. Therefore, until you hit the XP limit each day, be sure to use ONLY items that are not maximized.

Along with Coins (which have a separate limit), the daily XP limit is a ‘soft’ cap. This means that if you have only 2 points left before the cap today, but you place 1st in the next race, you’ll earn the full 10 points.

Point-Boost tickets are worth 50XP and do not count toward your daily cap. Use them whenever you feel appropriate. I generally recommend using them on newly-acquired items that you are about to use, as this will give them an instant point boost of about 10%.

Second, your maximum Position Score can be looked up by just tapping the Player Level icon in the top-left corner. Or check out this handy table (INSERT LINK HERE).

The trickiest components to your score are action points. Click here for a table of points that you can earn.

Just about ever action that is not simply driving forward and turning grants you action points. Stringing actions together in close proximity grants combo bonus. The longer you can keep a combo going, the more points you get.

As the game makes very obvious from the moment you begin, to get higher action scores, you need the right loadout.

Having a character match the track can grant you three items and the ability to initiate frenzies.

A correct Kart grants a multiplier on all of your action points, and a matching glider grants additional points as you continue a combo, as well as giving your more time in-between actions with which to continue a combo.

Here are a few simple tips to think about as you become familiar with the system:

Aim to keep your combo going. The ways to continue a combo that are under your control, even when you have no items are:

Collecting Coins

Using Dash panels

Getting a jump bonus

Gliding Longer

Mini-Turbos.

Breaking obstacles/traffic cones

Successfully* using an item

*Successfully using an item means different things for each. Mushrooms or Coins always grant points on use, while shells or bananas only give you points when you hit an opponent.

The main trick then becomes timing uses to extend your combo.

The developers were rather devious on this front. The only way to have enough time between actions to continue a combo consistently by only doing mini-turbos is to use a glider that matches your track, AND to raise that glider’s skill level such that you get at least a +15% to your combo time. This means having a High-End Glider at skill level 2+, a Super (rarity) Glider at skill level 4+, or a Normal glider at skill level 6.

This means you will (likely) not be able to rely on this strategy in your first tour, but keep it in mind in the future.

As such, you’ll need to work on perfectly timing item uses, and steer for jumps/coins/dash panels, while strategically timing your mini-turbos to fill in the gaps between everything else. This takes practice, but I believe in you!

There are some ways to complete this

The huge score benefit of matching an item to a track far outweighs the benefits that item Rarity has. That is, if Morton (a standard-rarity driver) will grant 3 items in a race, while Metal Mario only grants 2, you should be using Morton every time, as the mount of points earned during a frenzy is critical to achieving high scores on the final two cups of a tour.

The same principle holds for karts and gliders. Even if your High-End B-Dasher is granting you 400 base points, you’re better off using your under-leveled Landship on Kalimari Desert T, as you’ll more than make up for the points difference with the bonus multiplier.

There may be exceptions later on, after you have raised your items’ skill levels, but this is your first tour, and having anything above skill level 2 is quite unlikely.

Consider spending your coins on items that match with a track you’re having difficulty with.

But for more advice on your coin usage, check on part 4.

To catch the last section of our four part series, be sure to hit the link below!